I imagine I’m not alone in having parents and grandparents who don’t really understand what I do for a living. “I work in computing and do stuff with maps” is the easy approach (in fact it’s easier now that I don’t have to tag on the bit about being an archaeologist but not actually digging, and no it’s not like Time Team or Indiana Jones). Sometimes people ask why we don’t just “do everything with google maps”, which is the cue for a sit down and a longer chat about how (deep breath) you can’t do *everything* with google. So far, so good…

This all changed a couple of weeks ago, when, to my surprise I got elected to the Board of Directors of OSGeo. Cue shock, and great rejoicing (and in my head at least, tearful Oscars-style acceptance speeches). Mr Archaeogeek thinks this is cool enough to tell parents, grandparents, family friends etc. I do too, don’t get me wrong, but…

How to explain what it means to people who don’t use computers all that much, let alone know about gis, or open source or OSGeo?

There have been a few good articles on how to explain why you work in open source (the “how do you make money?” argument), but I feel like I need to go further back and explain about software licensing. I don’t think that most people really understand the difference between the way software is sold/licensed, and most other products, so I’m working on a car analogy that explains why open source software needs to exist. It goes something like:

“Can you imagine, that if you brought a car, and something went wrong with it, you couldn’t lift up the bonnet and take a look? Or if you did need to take it to a garage you had to use the one the car salesman told you to use? Or after 2 years they told you that they wouldn’t support your old car any longer, and you had to buy a new one? Or you couldn’t insure more than one person to drive it, but had to buy a new car for each person? Well that’s sort of what closed-source software is like”

(Note this is an analogy-in-progress)

Once that’s out of the way, then I can get on to gis, and hence to OSGeo, and all is fine!

Woefully out of date now, here’s a quick run down on the OSGIS 2011 conference, 3rd in that series, held at the University of Nottingham Centre for Geospatial Sciences in Nottingham over the 21st and 22nd of June.

The 21st was a day of workshops, under the banner of Interoperability and the OGC. My new colleague, Matt, and I did a workshop on using Ordnance Survey Open Data and Mastermap with Mapserver and PostgreSQL, using the OSGeo Live DVD. You can see a slightly edited version of the workshop below, or on slideshare. I have to admit that most of the kudos must go to Matt for creating some super scripts to make the initial data processing *much* easier, and to some of my other colleagues for their efforts in styling the data once it’s in Mapserver. The scripts and a small subset of the open data are available here- you’ll have to supply your own Mastermap!

Day Two was all about the talks- and I was impressed by the standard. The focus of OSGIS has always leant slightly towards the academic, so the stand-out talks for me were the ones that demonstrated that you can do real spatial analysis with open source GIS. There were also some very good papers on mapping in the developing world. Two of my ex-colleagues from Oxford Archaeology also did a joint paper showing how the use of open source software has progressed there- that was really good to see- it was nice to know that the baton had been passed on when I left! I gave people an introduction to the OSGeo:UK local chapter, which is also available on Slideshare here, and we had the chapter AGM. It’s extremely gratifying to see the numbers of people willing to hear about, and get involved with, the local chapter. I was going back through the reports I’d given in previous years, and the numbers of people signed up to our mailing list steadily creep up, year on year- we’re now well over the 100 people mark! (BTW, if you’re interested, our website is here).

All in all it was a really good couple of days. Next year the conference will be running from the 4th to the 5th of September, so for anyone that can’t make FOSS4G and wants to give OSGIS a try, now’s your chance!

So, it’s 5 years since OSGeo was formed- that’s pretty cool! Spurred on by this post, I thought I would say a little bit about my involvement with OSGeo, and also rather clumsily segue this into an announcement about my impending change of job. It’s true- after years of not really thinking of myself as an archaeologist any longer, but rather ‘someone who works in an archaeological unit”, I’ve finally gone and got myself a real job. Anyhow, more on that later.

5 years ago, I was playing around with mapserver, because I wanted a way of serving data and some shiny web maps and we had no money to do it with. I sucked at it big time, with no programming experience, and barely any command line experience. My only linux knowledge consisted of messing around with a Sharp Zaurus (the best pda I’ve ever had), and I only really equated open source with “free as in beer”. I remember the excitement on the mapserver mailing list when OSGeo was announced, along with the open sourcing of MapGuide, and I also remember quite fancying the idea of a whole conference about this cool new stuff when FOSS4G was announced.

Since then, there have been so many lightbulb moments for me, such as getting the real “point” of open source, getting more involved with OSGeo via starting the UK chapter, breakthrough moments when I have really started to understand a particular program or language, getting over my fear of public speaking by talking about open source at conferences, teaching colleagues and strangers how to use this software, and getting consultancy jobs designing applications that use it.

Through that time, I’ve seen (heck, we’ve all seen) OSGeo go from strength to strength, and become a truly global organisation. More importantly though, it’s a great global community.

I should also say that my new job, as Web GIS Specialist/Lead Consultant at Astun Technology, could only have happened through the experience I’ve gained over the last five years, so thanks to everyone that’s helped with that. I’m sad to be leaving Oxford Archaeology, but massively looking forward to my new role, which I hope will allow me to keep up my involvement with OSGeo, and in particular the UK chapter.

Will I keep blogging? Yes, and hopefully more often as I learn lots of new and exciting stuff (new to me- I’m a recent very enthusiastic convert to Python-years after everyone else). Will I still be doing open source stuff? Hell, yes! Will I change the name of the blog? Pehaps…

It seems like all I’ve posted about recently is very quick updates on conferences that I’ve been to, and not a lot about what I actually spend most of my time doing. The principal reason for this is being too busy, but that’s getting a bit lame. Once upon a time I used to post lots of tips and tricks about things I’d figured out- sometimes just as a aide memoire after days of trawling through mailing lists and forums. Once upon a time I used to have opinions (sometimes quite strong) on what was going on in the geo-world. It’s time I got back into that mindset, so here goes with a random selection of musings, in no particular order,  from the last few weeks…

• When using mapserver, the path to the log file for debugging must be an absolute path, relative won’t work. This is documented, but I missed it…
• Also when using new versions of mapserver, if making a WMSGetFeatureInfo request from OpenLayers (like this example), you will initially get an error saying that “FORMAT is a required parameter”. This does not occur with Geoserver. You can’t simply add it in the options, because it’s not sent through as part of the request. You have to add it as a vendorParam, but this isn’t well documented.
• Some of my colleagues/ex-colleagues have come up with a great workflow for producing publication-quality cartographic output from QuantumGIS and GvSIG. This is always one of the key excuses for needing expensive software, so it’s nice to give some alternative options. You can find it here, along with our guide for working with survey data in open source GIS. Anna and Christina have been doing some great stuff with open source GIS recently, in the rather more high-pressure world of field excavation rather than the rarified (read lower pressure) geospatial analysis work that I tend to do. What they have proven is that, with relatively small changes in workflow, it is possible to produce high-quality standards-compliant output, as part of a chain of contracters, using these open source packages, where we previously used to rely on proprietary software. Well done guys!
• The ThinkOpen event in Newcastle a few weeks ago (see, I couldn’t resist a quick conference mention) was great fun and very well attended despite falling at the beginning of snowmageddon here in the UK. The focus of the event was on case studies for open source GIS, along with a chance to see some of the new things Ordnance Survey has been doing with it’s OpenSpace and OpenData initiatives. This was the first time I had seen audience electronic voting in a conference- with live results (sometimes).
• The UK chapter of OSGeo is going from strength to strength, mainly thanks to the enthusiasm of the Centre for Geospatial Sciences at Nottingham, and a growing band of dedicated individuals. We’re getting ourselves on a stronger footing now for providing the kind of services that I have always wanted the chapter to provide, and I have high hopes for 2011 onwards!
• I got voted an OSGeo Charter Member a few weeks back, which was a lovely suprise and very much appreciated, given the high number of extremely busy, dedicated candidates. Of course I will continue to do what I can to promote the foundation, particularly since the business case for open source GIS is stronger than ever.
• I am more and more in love with QGIS as my primary GIS package. In the last few releases (1.5 onwards) it seems to have matured tremendously, and a whole series of enhancements have snuck in without me really noticing. If you haven’t tried it recently, download the most recent version- you will be pleasantly suprised! I also love the OSGeo4W setup method. This makes it incredibly easy to keep the software up to date, and to roll out unattended installs across a network.  I have an idea in the back of my mind about extending this to a USB stick, to merge PortableGIS with the OSGeo4W project. However, it’s just an idea at the moment and needs a bit of time to mature…
• I’m teaching a couple of workshops on an Introduction to GIS over the next few weeks (snow permitting), and have been benefiting immensely from the material put out by Linfiniti and others. Much appreciated guys- and I will of course be putting my notes up when they are done.

Phew! Hope that’s enough to keep you all going!

A couple of weeks ago was the OSGIS 2010 conference at the Centre for Geospatial Sciences at the University of Nottingham. This was expanded on the previous year’s event- it was spread over 2 days with workshops on the first day and the conference on the second. We also held the 2nd AGM of the UK OSGeo local chapter after the conference (a shameless attempt to get as many people as possible to attend).

The workshops went well- I reprised my “Databases and Web Mapping the Open Source way” workshop using the OSGeo Live DVD in the process. If you last tried Live DVDs a few years ago and think they are going to be unworkably slow and clunky then think again. The Live DVD team have done a very good job with the OSGeo version too!

As is usually the case when you’re involved in running an event, my memory of the actual papers on day two is somewhat hazy. Stand-out themes were TinyOWS and GvSIG in my book. The GvSIG team in particular were there in force, and very impressive.

The local chapter AGM went well, although I’ve committed my first mistake in calling it the local chapter, as we decided that was a bit too hells-angels, so we’re now called OSGeo:UK (branding updates to follow). Perhaps due to my (even more) shameless emotional blackmail in my introductory talk, there was a lot of new interest. We now have a mailing list of over 100 people for a start. The mailing list is actually the best place to go for my quick round-up of the AGM- check out the archive for more details. In particular though, if you are involved in promoting any workshops using open source software and you want some publicity then get in touch as we want to get a good list together of all the events that are taking place in the UK.

I followed up events in Nottingham with assisting at another two-day workshop in Leicester, at which I repeated my “databases and web mapping…” talk yet again, alongside talks on spatial statistics with R, and QGIS/GRASS. My talks for all these events are up on slideshare if you’re interested, and will follow in the downloads section of this website when time permits.

Just a quick note to say that I’ve been away on holiday for a fortnight, in gorgeous Orkney in the far north of Scotland. A fortnight of absolutely no computers (apart from downloading digital photos), wandering around beautiful islands with sandy beaches (OK, mostly in the driving wind or pouring rain), visiting Chambered Cairns, drinking whiskey and generally chilling out. I have to say that I very much enjoyed disengaging from technology, information streams and general online interaction very much, so obviously needed the break! I’d post a photo or two but haven’t got round to QA-ing them all yet!

I’m off to the AGI conference in Stratford this afternoon, and would welcome the opportunity to meet up with folk while I’m there- we’re intending some kind of informal OSGeo UK meetup on Thursday but I’ll be around for both days. I’ll blog about the conference while I’m there if I get the chance.

As someone else said recently, the advantage of catching up on several weeks of RSS posts all at once is that you see some trends and relationships that you’d probably miss otherwise. One that caught my eye was this, from Martin Daly, in response to a long and thought-provoking piece on open source by Ian Bicking. Without trying to second-guess either Ian or Martin, it’s clear that there are always going to be different motivations for adopting and working with open source. Via a tortuous chain of links I revisited this post of Paul Ramsey’s from last year, responding to a Jack Dangermond interview, in which open source is mentioned and summarily dismissed. Paul is uneasy with the political connotations of calling open source a “movement”, but for some people that’s clearly what it is.

I’m beginning to see open source as being a choice similar to choosing organic food, or going green. For some people, this is a political movement. For others, nothing else makes any logical sense. For others, it’s a purely market-driven decision, and I’m sure there are many more motivations. The different camps don’t always sit nicely together, and occasionally see each other as harming the general cause. But we should all take heart from the fact that going green used to be the province of the yoghurt-eating, hemp-wearing hippies, but we’re all recycling and changing our light-bulbs to energy savers (and even eating yoghurt and wearing hemp) now.

It’s funny how you can have a fairly quiet time of things, then suddenly everything happens in one week…

So Monday was the first Open Source GIS conference in the UK, affectionately known to it’s friends as OSGIS 2009. The event was sold out in advance (150 people) ,  and seemed to be well received, though it was hectic, with two streams and workshops going on through most of the day.  I quite enjoyed the quick-fire aspect of the talks, with most being limited to 15-30 minutes. Perhaps my favourite was from Rob Booth, who talked about using Open Source for Spire- the UK Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA)  SDI. While there were issues with scaling, the flexibility, response and community/developer support were all big plus points in choosing that solution. This is a good counter-example to bring up whenever anyone says that open source is just for the little guys.

We had the first AGM of the OSGeo UK local chapter after the conference, and many thanks to those hardy souls who stayed around for it. The main point of discussion was whether the chapter should become an ‘organisation’, in the voluntary sense, which would allow us to have a bank account and various useful things like that. We also discussed putting a bid together for FOSS4G in 2011, and decided that 2012 would be a better bet, it being Olympic year and all that. Mateusz had some really good points to make about using social networking to get people involved, and the idea of having informal get-togethers outside of the big conferences. So- we now have a linkedin group, a facebook group and some tools for helping people plan meetups will be following shortly. Lunch-time pub get-togethers were very popular. Can’t imagine why… join the groups though- the more the merrier!

So- to next year. Bigger, better, and shinier. There’s a date for OSGIS 2010 already, and plans are afoot to spread it over 1.5 days, with an afternoon of workshops either before the main event or after it. See you there!

Time for another round-up…

• The Ordnance Survey have revised the terms and conditions of using their OpenSpaces mapping API (via Mapperz), which is a step in the right direction, since they now allow adverts on your site. There’s still a daily limit to the number of views/address lookups that you can do too. However, there are a couple of points that need mentioning/clarifying… firstly there’s a strange condition that you can’t use this for “internal business administration”. Not sure what that really means, but I assume it’s so you don’t stick it behind a firewall and stop OS counting your number of page views or something. Furthermore, there’s nothing obvious on the site about whether you need a license to use the data still, in which case it’s still a show-stopper. I’ve emailed them for clarification about that, so watch this space…
• Tyler Mitchell has an article in Direction Magazine about “Reassuring End Users of Open Source“.  I’m uneasy about the term “Reassuring”, as it has slightly negative connotations (“don’t worry!”, “worry, who said anything about worrying?”), but the article is well worth a read with some useful comments on the advantage of open source for businesses and the role of OSGeo.
• No doubt everyone already knows about the OpenGeo Architecture White Paper. Personally I think it’s another good paper to have around and quote from (or steal slides from) when trying to convince people that using open source geospatial software  is a more flexible and all round sensible approach to your geospatial stack.
• OStatic have an article about Open Source software at NASA. Not so much geospatial stuff going on there, but it’s good to see the top two reasons why NASA go for Open Source:

To increase NASA software quality via community peer review

To accelerate software development via community contributions

It’s good to see “quality” as an argument for choosing Open Source, rather than “saving money”!

I’m excited to announce that the list of papers and workshops for the first UK Open Source GIS conference is now available on the website. With Tyler Mitchell doing the keynote,  and a choice of 25 papers and 4 workshops, it’s going to be a really good day. We’re hoping to finish up with the first AGM of the UK local chapter of OSGeo too, so I hope you’ll join us!

The deadline for submitting a paper to the UK Open Source GIS conference approaches on the 15th March so get your abstracts in.  We now have a flier for you to print out and show your friends/boss/colleagues/relatives/pets. Tell the world, and even if you don’t fancy presenting, make a date for your diaries of the 22nd June 2009!